How did the airlines fare during Hurricane Irene?

If you were one of the unfortunate air travelers duringHurricane Irene, this survey won't come as a surprise to you: Overall, customer service stunk.

It tookAmerican Airlines over an hour-and-a-half to respond to customers on average during the storm. Delta was better, but passengers still waited 30 minutes to talk to a service representative. That was the case with Spirit, Jet Blue, Air Tran and Frontier, too.

U.S. Airways rated the best by keeping its passengers on hold for an average of 2 minutes.

The study was conducted by StellaService, an independent company that rates customer service experiences, particularly focusing on online retailers.

"The study was conducted on Friday, August 26, 2011," the company reports on its blog. "An average of eight phone calls were made to each airline from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET on Friday, August 26th. Approximately 12 tweets sent to each airline between 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on Friday, August 26th."

For those customers who contacted airlines throughTwitter, Air Tran,American Airlines and United rated the worst. They did not respond to the survey testers at all.

The survey praised Delta on itsTwitter performance. Customer service agents responded to tweeting customers in 14 minutes, on average. Jet Blue also responded to most customer tweets. And, while Frontier responded viaTwitter, it took them an average of 4 hours to do so.

"Delta took it one step further and personalized it’s Twitter support by denoting the initials of the specific agent at Delta who replied to each tweet," the report says. "This is time saving and convenient in the event the issue needed to be taken to the phones and that agent’s name could be referenced as someone who was already aware of the problem / issue."

American Airlines issued this statement in response to the survey:

“We disagree with the findings of the study. We believe it is highly inaccurate and based on an insufficient sample size – eight calls and 12 tweets on average – that that skewed results and does not represent reality. We handled more than 100,000 calls on Friday, and during the period in question our customers waited an average of 21 minutes – far less than alleged and in line with most of our peers.

"Our response time for AAdvantage Executive Platinum, Platinum and Gold customers averaged from 30 seconds to less than three minutes per call. Of the 78 tweets directed to us from Thursday through Sunday, a significant number of which did not request action, we responded to 46 tweets either publicly or privately to assist customers, and we also sent four proactive tweets with travel information related to the storm. Each day, and especially in times of service disruption, we make responding to and informing our customers – whether through social or other traditional direct channels – our highest priority.”